Australia's 47th Parliament is off to an inauspicious start

Week one is done for the 47th Parliament and the reviews are in.

"Frankly, pretty embarrassing," is how independent ACT senator David Pocock summed up his first question time. New Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather said if it looked bad on TV it was "even worse in person".

"We're in the middle of one [of] the worst cost of living and housing crises in our history and some incredibly well paid politicians are just sitting in a room yelling insults at each other," he tweeted.

Two months from the election, of course everyone got the new politics memo. But while the personnel have switched and party brands have swapped sides, some just don't care and for others it mucks with their business model.

Indeed, it took two days in Canberra for One Nation leader Pauline Hanson to pull a race stunt and one question into the first question time for the Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to very publicly wave a whiff of union corruption in front of the Prime Minister.

Aaaand on day two, Mr Dutton accused the government of seeking to please an "inner city woke audience" as it abolishes the cashless debit card system. There's a certain audience who will love that hard-right language.

"It's only day two of question time and it's the second best day they'll have," Anthony Albanese warned.

But lo! Mr Albanese allowed himself this week to get all shouty at the diminished Coalition. Whoops. That seemed too easy. A concession he would have regarded as a win back in the 46th Parliament when up against Scott Morrison.

With parliament back, it is business time and legislation addressing big promises in aged care, climate, skills and domestic violence are bounding into the building.

"We are determined to be better and determined to do better," Mr Albanese told the parliament. "My colleagues and I want to treat every day in this job, in this place, in government as an opportunity to deliver for the people of Australia to fulfil our promises. To prove worthy of the trust that the Australian people have placed in us."

The new guard, eight new senators and 35 new members, are making their presence felt. And they are being accommodated.

There have quickly been amendments to the standing orders to make the running of parliament inclusive and more family-friendly, with some limits to late night sittings and more questions for crossbenchers. Yet the staged, laborious and self-serving question time "questions" known as 'Dorothy Dixers' have survived.

The more things change, the more they stay interminably the same.

Diversity and equality have leapt out in the first speeches.

"Our challenge as leaders is to listen deeply. Beyond the daily rhythm of the Twitter feed, the weekly rhythm of the lead media story, the yearly rhythm of the pandemic, the electoral cycle rhythm of the rise and fall of political parties, to the deep slow heartbeat of the decades," independent Member for Curtin Kate Chaney told parliament.

"Our decisions need to balance all these rhythms and turn them into the music of our generation."

Yet it still seems like reality is yet to hit some members. Perhaps it is not real until the first post-election Newspoll comes out.

The Morrison-led Coalition was roundly rejected by voters on May 21. Its parliamentary moderate wing was summarily replaced by an army of independents.

Mr Morrison himself appears to be doing his level best to avoid sitting on the backbench, slipping out of the country to meet former and current world leaders in Japan and pointedly post about it on social media.

That and his turn preaching in Perth to fellow worshippers about not having trust in government, or the UN, surely has cast doubt on his commitment to his electorate of Cook.

The economy has other ideas, anyway. So hold onto your grab handles.

Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers, warned by the new Speaker Milton Dick to "cool his jets for a minute" on Thursday, has confirmed economic growth is slowing and inflation is set to rise further, to peak at 7.75 per cent this year.

"The global picture is complex and the outlook is confronting," he told parliament, listing the impacts of COVID-19, ongoing conflict and war and clogged supply chains.

Australia is outperforming much of the world, he said, but Australians are still dealing with falling real wages, flatlining productivity, skills and labour shortages. The impact will be felt on basics; food, fuel and energy prices.

"Inflation will unwind again, but not in an instant," the Treasurer said.

"The current expectation is that we'll get worse this year, moderate next year, and normalise the year after. We haven't reached the peak yet, but we can see it from here."

This, so far, is not stopping or curtailing the government's plans.

Despite a small target election campaign, the Prime Minister claims a mandate for change after achieving an absolute majority in the House. The Greens claim a mandate to check the government after a record showing in the Senate, and 16 overall in parliament. The independents claim a mandate against politics as usual but did not snag the balance of power in the lower house, while the Coalition is seeking relevance as the opposition but has managed to deal itself out of negotiations over climate action.

How much can the Albanese government trade on blaming the previous government for the situation it finds itself in? It is what all newish governments do, even those not so new. Even at the bitter end, the Morrison government routinely sought question time trashing of Labor's "alternative policies and approaches".

Now the opposition complains. Without a sense of irony, the manager of opposition business Paul Fletcher has the unenviable task of complaining to the Speaker about "open-ended" invitations to "criticise the record of the former government".

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But should, or indeed how, can Labor be denied the chance to blame its predecessor for a trillion-dollar debt and other sizeable headaches? There is a lot to fix.

It is hard to shake some of the worst aspects of the two-party system. The adversarial nature, or at least the show of it, can be addictive and just when you think you are out, they pull you back in.

The 47th Parliament is still shiny, but just getting warmed up.